There is a moment of silence after they have landed, the icy forest sluggish in its wakening, the morning air too cold and crisp to draw its creatures willingly from their beds. Clouds of warm breaths pool around the mare’s dark nostrils, the mist framed like halos in the morning light, dissipating slowly into the frosted trees. A trace of a scowl hardens the corners of her lips. The slender pegasus has never been fond of winter and its bitter chill. Despite having been birthed during the white season, she does not find herself very compatible, or very cooperative with its frigid temperatures.

(Why watch someone freeze, when they can burn?)

Her mouth twitches sourly, large wings pressing closer to her sides as she shifts her cloak over her shoulders. Imogen will make do with this new world and its natures, as she always has—ever the puppeteer, the performer and snake, she will adapt. Just as her mother had taught her.

She forces her mind along impatiently, shifting her weight and stretching her neck in Rukh’s direction. Releasing a hot breath across the pale mare’s withers, she presses the soft velvet of her muzzle against the little lamb’s skin, embracing the plush joint of flesh where her neck and shoulder meet. It is a practiced, seamless embrace—affectionate, comforting, protective. Beady black eyes shift to the bird, and it delights her to be so vulnerable beneath his curved talons, both of them knowing that he can do nothing. She has held her little nazahna’s heart far longer than his egg had ever been conceived, and with bonds of chain, she has no intention of releasing her hold anytime soon.

Letting slip a flickering, taunting smirk for the feathered nuisance, Imogen’s attention is quickly diverted to more important things. Dark-rimmed ears twist with the crunch of hoof beats, the pant of breaths, and the rustle of branches disturbed by movement. Turning her head, her beady eyes hold the strange stallion. It is a discord of emotions that assaults the small pegasus within the first few seconds; a notion of regard, even admiration, with the sight of his brilliantly colored wings—but the moment is far too short, swept away and smothered too easily as her eyes land on the horn sprouting from his brow.

How unfortunate that a proud man be defiled so heinously.

Her instinct is to treat him as she would in Amaethon (with disgust, like a bastard vermin of infidelity) but she is quick to hold her barbed tongue and steely glare. After all, this most certainly isn’t Amaethon, and she knows nothing of the customs in this world. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to entertain him for a moment or two, if only to glean some information from his gentlemanly lips.

With only a brief few seconds passing since the stallion’s greeting, Imogen turns her body, angling herself in a subtle, hairline position of dominance between the stranger and Rukh. “Ilios,” the pegasus smiles, and perhaps her grin is just a little too wide, her teeth a little too bared to be welcoming, but she treads carefully. “Helovia, you say? We have only just arrived; I hadn’t expected a welcoming party so soon,” a breath of laughter softens her words, wrapping them in a swathe of silk and burying ulterior motives from prying eyes. Now, more than ever, she must play her game flawlessly.


“Speech.”

imogen

I know how to be your fantasy